graduated, back in ’81—just kept doing this jagged über-Euro party-girl circuit of London and LA and Palm Beach and the Upper East Side.
It was pointless trying to keep an up-to-date address or phone number for her on hand. I relied on directory-information operators to tell me whether our orbits had aligned whenever I was in New York.
This time I’d put it off for a couple of months, what with moving, looking for work, and stowing my furniture and old Porsche in a friend-of-Mom’s barn on Long Island. You know: life. All the grown-up crap I so royally sucked at.
I dialed 411, gritting my teeth in anticipation of having to spell Astrid’s surname for the operator. It was Niro-de-Barile, shortened by Dean to “Nutty Buddy” in the very first phone message he’d written down for me the week he and I moved in together back in Syracuse.
Today’s operator indeed had a listing for her—in the East Fifties, no surprise.
I dialed, expecting to get her machine, and was surprised by her live actual “Hello.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Madissima, how the hell are you?”
“Decent,” I said. “And at long last actually living in the city, thank God. You?”
“I’ve been meaning to phone you, in fact, but couldn’t remember what they call that last godforsaken town you were living in, after Syracuse—”
“Pittsfield.”
“The aptly named. How could one have forgotten?”
“With great pleasure and appalling haste,” I said. “What’s your news?”
“Darling, it appears I’ve gotten married.”
“Good God.”
I heard her blow a stream of cigarette smoke against her phone’s mouthpiece. “Last Saturday, actually. Decided I was overdue.”
“Who’s the lucky winner?”
“Well, Antonini was out of town, so I stuck a pin in my address book and landed on Christoph.”
“Was that the polo guy or the one with a Bugatti?”
“The Swiss one.”
“There was a Swiss one?”
“I brought him up for drinks the summer you were all crammed into that place on Park and Eighty-ninth? He said he’d never seen a filthier bathroom?”
“I thought you were mad for Prentice that year.”
“ Fuck me, I’d have had to live in Boston. Anathema.”
“I’m rather fond of Switzerland,” I said. “Hot cheese. Subtitles in three languages. Not much for foreplay, if memory serves, but excellent value overall. Congratulations to him, and best wishes to you.”
“We had great fun. Chartered a plane to Southampton.”
“My least favorite place on earth, but whatever.”
“And how is Dean?” she asked.
“Fine, thank you. Looking for work.”
“He’s an inventor or something?”
“Or something,” I said.
“I told Mummie you’d married a cabinetmaker.”
I laughed. “How’d she take it?”
“Oh, she was quite, quite pleased for you. She said, ‘How marvelous, just like David Linley.’ ”
I cracked up.
“Don’t laugh, Madeline,” said Astrid. “One has to break these things to Mummie gently. She’s not accustomed to reality.”
“Oh, please. I mean, admit it, the image of me married to anyone even slightly resembling the offspring of Princess Margaret is pretty fucking funny.”
I heard the click of Astrid’s lighter as she lit a fresh Marlboro.
“Oh, and of course Camilla was asking after you,” she continued.
I’d known the bitch as Cammy at Sarah Lawrence, and had made the mistake of introducing her to Astrid.
“And how is darling Chlamydia?” I asked, not caring at all.
“Blonde,” said Astrid. “Very, very blonde.”
“I saw that. Some party shot in Town and Country, if memory serves—which just goes to show what an appallingly nouveau-riche rag it’s become. And she’s stolen my nose.”
“Be generous. Her birth-schnozz was hideous.”
“ My nostrils disporting themselves at B-list Eurotrash galas attached to that odious Nescafé-society cow? She should at least rivet a small plaque to her upper lip crediting the original.”
“And Camilla’s always so lovely about you,” she said, laughing with a touch of smoker’s wheeze.
I snorted into the phone.
Astrid was undaunted. “She absolutely adores you. Why, just the other day she turned to me and said, ‘Isn’t it terribly, terribly sad about Madeline? She might have been such fun if she weren’t poor.’”
I sighed. “Festering bitch. Tell her she owes me nose royalties.”
“I’ll have Christoph give your husband a job instead—how’s that? He’s got a little company. Out in New Jersey.”
“Kiss my shapely ass.”
Astrid laughed. “Well, for God’s sake let’s at least introduce them. I mean, who’d ever have believed you and I would be married, and simultaneously? We must have drinks—quickly, before one of us fucks it up.”
“I demand absinthe.”
“Perfect. Wednesday night.”
“You gladden my tiny black heart,” I said.
“Pitter-clank, pitter-clank.”
“Exactly.”
“Ciao, bellissima,” she purred, hanging up.
4
Wednesday started out Capra and ended Polanski.
I booked out from beneath the ornate gateway arch of our building’s front courtyard, then turned east on Sixteenth